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An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory DAVID RAY GRIFFIN Author of The New Pearl Harbor

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An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory

DAVID RAY GRIFFIN

Author of The New Pearl Harbor

Advance Praise for Debunking 9/11 Debunking"David Ray Griffin 's Debunking 9/11 Debunking is a superb compendium of the strong body of evidence showing the official U.S. Government story of what happened on September 11,2001 to be almost certainly a monstrous series of lies. Tragical1y, the entire course of U.S. foreign and dornestic policies sin ce that date has grown out of these almost certain falsehoods. This single book could (and should) provide the basis for the United Nations, International Court of Justice, or some special1y constituted global body (independent of the U.5.) to investigare with highest priority, and pu blicly report its findings about, the charge that unknown elements within the U.5. Government, and possibly some individuals elsewhere closely al1ied to the U.5., caused or contributed to causing the events of 5eptember 11 to happen." -Bill Christison, forrner senior official of the CIA "In this asronishiug and fearsome book, David Ray Griffin rigorously and brilliantly first dissects and rhen demolishes the recent published accounts that purport to debunk rhe critics of the Bush Adrninistration's official explanations of the evenrs of 9/11. Dr. Griffin reveals how the purported 'debunkings' ignore the blatant inconsistencies and obvious cover-ups in the official accounts. No amount of spin can honestly account for the pulverization and nearly free-fall collapse of the World Trade Center buildings by anything orher than pre-planned demolition. No amount of spin can realistically explain away the absence of commercial jetliner wreckage at the Pentagon. No amount of spin can logically explain away the miles-wide dispersion of airliner debris if Flight 93 was not blown up in the airo Dr. Griffin carefully delineares crucial questions that must be answered directly and honestly, without bias, spin or conflicts of interest, This book is a challenge to rhe mass media. If the trnth about the events of 9111 rernains concealed and ignored, it will be at our-e-and our nation's-peril." -Barry R. Komisaruk, Rutgers University Distinguished 5ervice Professor "David Ray Griffin hits another one orrt of the park by taking on the left gatekeepers and the rnass media for the lies and cover-up called 'the official story of 9/11/01,' which is the greatest conspiracy theory ever perpetrated on the American publico 1 highly recommend ths book for all thinking Arnericans. " - Meria HelIer, producer and host of the Mena Heller Shour

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DEBUNKING 9/11 DEBUNKING

An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Oth er Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory

David Ray Griffin

OllVE

PRESSAn rrnpr int of Intcrlink Grou p, lne.

www.interfirrk books.com

Firsr publi shed in 2007 by

O LIVE BRA N CH PRESS An imp rin r of Inrerlink Pub lishing Gro up, Inc. 4 6 Cr osby Srreer, N or rharnp ro n, M assachus et ts 01060 www.interlin kboo ks.com

Co pyright David Ray Gri ffin, 2007

AH rights reserved . No parr of rhis publica tion may be rep rod uced, sto red in a retrieval sys rem, or tran sm itted in a ny form o r by any rnean s, elecrro nic, rnechanical, pho toc opying, recordin g, o r o therw ise withour the pri or per mission o f the pu blisher,

Library o Congress Ca talogi ng-in-P ub licatio n Data Griffin, David Ray, 193 9 Deb unking 9/ 11 debnnking : an answ er t Pop ular mechan ics an d othe r defen ders of the officia l co nspieacy rheor y I Dav id Ray Griffin. p. cm . Includ es bibiiograp h ical referen ces and ind exo ISBN 978 -1-56656 -686 -5 (p bk.) 1. Sep tem ber 11 Terro risr Att acks, 2001 -Miscellanea . 2 . Co nspiracies. T, Popular mech ani cs. 11. Title. 1II. T itle: De bnnki ng nine/eleven debunking. H V6432.7 .G747 20 07 973 .93 1- dc22 200 70061 71Print ed a nd bo und in Canad a by Webco m 10 9 8 765 4 3 2 1

An error does not beaime truth by reason of multiplied propagation , nor does truth becom error because nob ody sees it. Truth stands, even if there no publ ic support. It is self sustained.

- Gandhi

Cons piracy theories are like mushrooms; they grow where there is no light. - Thomas H. Kean.and-Lee H. Hamilton, Precedent

To req uesr ou r co mplete 40 -pa ge full-colo r cat al og, plea se call us roll free a t r- 8o o-238-LINK, visit o ur websire a r www.inrerl inkh ook s.com , o r write to Int erlink Publishin g 46 Cro sby Street, N o rt ham pton, MA 0 106 0 e-mail: in fo@in terlinkboo ks.co m

Also by David Ray GriffinThe N ew Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Q uestions A bout the Bush Administation and 9/11 The 9/11 Com m ission Report. Omissions and Distortions 9/11 and American Emp ire: Intellectuals Speak O ut (edired with Peter Dale Scott) Christian Faith and the Trutb Behind 9/11

ContentsAck nowledgmentsInrrodu ction: Conspiracy Th eories and Evidence 1 ON E 27 9/11 Live or Distorted: Do the NORAD Tapes Verify The 911 1 Comm ission Rep ort? TW O 95 The Real 9/11 Conspiracy Th eory: A Critique of Kean and Harnilton's Without Precedent THREE The Disintegration of the World Trad e Center: Ha s NIST Debunked the The ory of Conrrolled Dem olition ? FOUR 207 Debunking 9111 Myths: A Failed Attempt by Popu lar Mechanics Conclusion 309

N otes 323 Index 386

INTR ODU CTI ON

Acknowledgm ents

Conspiracy Theories and Evid ence

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he 9/11 truth rnovement is filled w ith remarka ble people, from aH wa lks of life, who are united by a passionat e commitment to exposing th e falsiry of th e officia l theory a bout 9/11. In writing this book , 1 have benefited fro m th e generous assis ta nce of a grea t num ber of these individ ua ls. My debt s to many of th em are indica ted by my references to their w ork in this book's end notes. But 1 have also received direct help fro m m any of them. Alrhough 1 wish 1 could write a paragrap h about each one of th em, 1 can here publicly exp ress my gra titude on ly by menti oning th eir names: Daniel Athe arn , Elias Davidsson , Kee Dewdney, Eric Do uglas, Ma rk Ga ffney, Ed H aas, Ian Hensha ll, J im H offman, Ken j enkins, Steven jones, M ichael Me yer, Rowl and M o rgan , Geo rge Nelson, Ra lph O mholt, Ma tthew O tt, Pat Patterson , Ru ssell Pickering, Kevin Ryan, and Ch uck Thurston. T here ar e, mo reover, four people 1 must lift up for special than ks because of th e extraordinary amo unt of time th ey devoted to th is project, going far beyond any reason abl e ca ll of d uty: M atthew Everett, Tod Fletcher, Ro bin H o rdon , and Eliza beth Woo dwo rth. 1 also wa nt to exp ress my ap preciation to Colin Scoggins . Although he is not a member of th e 9/11 truth movernent, his willingness to answer a grea t number of questio ns grea tly aided my und ersrandi ng of FAA air traffic contro l in general a nd the 9/11 ac tio ns of controllers at Bost on Ce nter in pa rticular. Wi tho ut his help , com bined with th at of former contro ller Robin H ordon , che first cha pter wo uld have made little advance on my previous discussions . In addition, 1wish to ackn owledge my debt, and th at of the 911 1 truth mo vernent in genera l, to Mi chel Mousha beck an d Pam ela T ho m pson, th e pu blisher a nd editor, resp ectively, of Olive Bran ch PresslIuterl ink Publishing Gro up. Witho ut th eir joint decision ba ck in 20 03 ro take a chance on a manuscript entitled The N ew Pearl Harbar, it might never have been pu blishe d, in w hich case my lat er 9111 bo oks wo uld never ha ve been w ritt en, One co uld not imagine, mor eover, anyo ne easier to wo rk with th an th em and th e rest of the team at Inte rlink. Finally,I wo uld like to express my inexpressible gra titude to my wife, Ann Jaqu a, who in co untless ways makes m y wo rk p ossible.

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he evidence that 9/11 was an inside job is overw helming. Most peopl e who exa mine this evidence with an ope n mind find it con vincing, or a t lea st pro fouu dly unsettling. There are, h ow ever, seve ra l wide ly held beliefs rha t w ork to prevent people frorn examining thi s evidence with, in Richard Falk's phrase, "even just a 30 -perce nt open mind ."! These beliefs often keep people fro m exa mining th e evidence at all. 1 can use myself as a case in point.

My Own StoryUntil th e spring of 2003, I ha d not serio usly looked at a ny of the evidenc e. 1 was vaguely awa re th at th er e were peopl e, at least on th e Internet, wh o we re suggesting a revisioni st acco unt of 9/11, accord ing t o which US officia ls w ere complicit. But 1 did not t ak e the tim e to find th eir web sites. 1 was bu sy writing a hist ory of Ame rica n im periali sm , which I had begun th e d a y af ter 9/11. H aving acce pted th e official acco unt of th e 9/11 att acks, 1 had also accep ted th e liber al int erpr etati on th er eof, according to wh ich th ey we re " blowback" for US fore ign p olicy, especially in the Ara b and Muslim worlds. T his int er pr etati ori con vin ced me th at the lar ge book on globa l pr obl em s on which 1 had been wo rki ng for severa l yea rs wo uL be incornplete witho ut a sepa ra re d chapt er on America n imp eriali sm o Studying this hist ory probabl y helped me later cha nge my int erpre tation of 9/11, because 1learn ed th at severa l of our nati on 's wa rs, such as th ose aga inst M exico, th e Philippines, and Vietn am, h ad been justified by incid ents that, altho ugh th ey wer e ac tua lly cre at ed by our own armed for ces, were used to claim th at we had been attacked. But th is awareness did not lead me im mediately to co nc1ude th at 9/11 had also been orchestra ted as a pretex to Altho ugh th at possibility did cross my mind , 1 did not take it serio usly. I maiutained th is mindset even after being intr oduced, late in 2002, to a professor fro rn ano ther co untry who said he was qu ite certain th at 9/11 had been an ins ide jobo1 remem ber replying that I d id n ot think th e Bush administratio n -even the Bush administration -e-would do such a hein ou s th ing. H ow ever, I ad ded, 1 w ould be willing ro look at whateve r he con sidered th e best evidence . H e directed me to some 9/11 websi tes, but 1 did no t find th em convinci ng. 1 do n ot kn ow if th ey were bad sites or wh eth er Ilooked at their evidence with less th an a 30-percent open mind.

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In any case, 1 went back ro working on American imperialisrn, assuming 9/11 not to be an instance thereof. My response was quite different, however, a few months later when another colleague sent a different website, which had an abbreviated version of Paul Thornpson's massive 9/11 rimeline," Although this tirneline was drawn enrirely from mainstream sources, it contained hundreds of stories that contradicted one or another aspeet of the official account of 9/11. Additional reading then led me to Nafeez Ahmed's The War on Freedom: How and Why America Was Attaeked September 2001. 3 On the basis of the combined evidence summarized by Thompson and Ahmed, it took me only a short time to realze that there was strong prima facie evidence that the Bush administration had, at the very least, intentionally allowed the attacks to occur. Through additional study, 1 became aware that sorne of the strongest evidence indicated that forces within the government must have actually orchestrated the artacks.

of New York, " do zens of which indicated that powerful explosions had occurred in the Twin Towers before and during their collapses. On the basis of these developments, which were discussed in my third book ou the subject, Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11,81 carne to consider the evidence for the alternative interpretation of 9/11 strong enough to convince most people, if only they would examine it.

A Former CIA Analyst Examines the EvidenceThis contention-that the crucial issue now is simply whether people wll expose themselves ro the evidence-was illustrated in 2006 by forrner CIA analyst Bill Christison. In August of that year, he published an essay entitled, "Stop Belittling the Theories About September 11."9 In a letter to friends explaining why he wrote it, he said : "1 spent the first four and a half years since September 11 utterly unwilling to consider seriously the conspiracy theories surrouuding the attacks of that day. . . . [I]n the Iast half year and after considerable agony, I've changed my mind.v'"

Reporting and Evaluating the EvidenceRealizing that this conclusion, if correct, was extremely important-e- by then the Bush adrninistration had used 9/11 as a basis for attacking Iraq as weI1 as Afghanistan-I wrote The New Pearl Harbor, summarizing the evidence rhat had been gathered by members of the 9/11 truth movement who had opened their minds to it long before 1 hado Presenting what 1 caI1ed a "strong prima facie case for official compliciry.?" 1 argued that this evidence was strong enough to warrant a new investigation if, as then appeared Iikely, the report of the 9/11 Commission turned out to be a cover-up, After seeing when it was published in ]uly 2004 that The 9/11 Commission Report was even worse than 1 had anticpated, 1 wrote The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, in which 1 pointed out over a hundred instances of deception in the report, many of which were extremely serious. 1 concluded by stating that the Commissiori's report, "far from lessening my suspicions about official complicity, has served to confirm them. Why would the rninds in charge of this final report engage in such deception if they were not trying to cover up very high crimes?"? Further study reinforced this conviction, Thanks to a conversation with an attorney, Gary Becker, 1 saw that, given the 9111 Commission's failure even ro try to rebut the prima facie case against the Bush administraticn, this case could now be considered conclusive. Also, the cumulat ve argument that the Twin Towers and Building 7 of the World Trade Center were brought down by explosives became even stronger through rwo developments-an essay by physicist Steven jones'' and the release of the 9/11 oral histories given by members of the Fire Department

Polling the American PublicAlthough the fact that Christison had been a CIA analyst makes his change of mind especialIy significant, another measure of the convincing power of the evidence is the sheer number of Americans who by 2006 questioned the official account. A Zogby poll taken that May indicated that 42 percent of the American people believed that "the US governrnent and its 9/11 Commission concealed ... critical evidence that contradicts their official explanation of the September 11 th attacks." Even more significant was the finding that the conviction that no cover-up had occurred was held by only 48 percent. (Ten percent said they were unsure.)!' This meant that even though virtually a11 of the mainstream press coverage of 9/11 has supported the official account, less than half the American people are confident that the governrnent and the 9/11 Cornmission have not covered up evidence contradicting this account. People can differ, of course, with regard to the kind of evidence they believe is being covered up. Many may think of it as evidence that would merely embarrass the governrnent, not show its cornplicity in the attacks. More revelatory, therefore, was a Scripps/Ohio University pon in August 2006, which showed 36 percent of the public holding that "federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them ' because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East.'''12 Until the publication of these po11s, the press had evidently considered the 9/11 truth movement a marginal phenomenon, which as such could be ignored, But these polls changed that perception. A story in Time magazine, reporting the second poll, wrote: "Thirty-six percent adds up to

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I!l'2 Debunking 9/ JI Debunking Introduction: Conspiracy Theories and Evidence 3

a lot of people. This is not a fringe pheno rneno n. It is a mainstream po litical rea lity," IJ

A Flurry of Debunking PublicationsThi s new percepton was quickly foll ow ed in Aug ust by four su bsta ntial publcati ons intended ro reassure th ose wh o still believed the offcial story, Unlike rnosr pr evious official and semi-o fficial pu blic ations, th ese new w ritings did not sirnply a ffirm th e truth of th e offical acco unt of 9/11. They also explicitly sou ght to debunk "co nspiracy th eories " th at took issue with this acco unt. O ne of these was a Yanity Pair essa y by M ichael Br onner enti tle d "9/11 Live: T he N O RA D Tapes."! " The tape s in qu est ion had been used by th e 9/1 1 Co mmis sion in 2004 to give a new acco unt of th e mil it ary's respon se ro th e hijackings. Th e acco unt th at had been given in N ORAD's timeline of September 18 , 2 001, which w as used as th e basis for th e m ilita ry's testirnon y to th e Co mm ission in 200 3, had left th e mi lita ry open to th e charge th ar its failur e to interce pt th e air liners resulted fro m a stan ddo wn order. That acco unt also led to th e charge tha t the military had sho t down Un ited Flighr 9 3. (1 had explaine d th e reason s for th ese cha rges in Th e Ne w Pearl Harb or .) The Co mmissio n, on the basis of t hese tap es, co nstr uc te d a new account, which pu t all th e blame on the FAA. Co ns tr uct ing this new sto ry required accus ng the m ilitary of having told a fa lse sto ry. So rne members of the Co m missio n even suggested that th e mi litary told this flse story k no wingly. But this new story prot ects th e military fro m th e m or e seri ou s cha rge of or chestrating , or at least cornp liciry in , th e attacks. Bronner was th e journa list to w rite this story because he w as t he firs t one to be given acce ss ro th ese t ap es . Why? This may have had so me thing to do wit h th e fac t th at he was an asso ciate p roducer of th e m ovie United 93, which fa ithfully p ortrayed th e Co m mission's new acco unt, accor ding to wh ich the m ilitary could n ot possibly h ave sho t this flight d own. Bron ner 's essa y, in any case, was ex plici tly inten de d ro refute " cons piracy th eori es " abo ut th e flights in general and United Flight 93 in particul ar. In one of Bronner 's sever al r eferen ces to th ese th eori es, he cites tw o q uesti ons rais ed at the first hearing of th e 9/11 Co mmissio n by its chairman, Thomas Kean- " Ho w did th e hijackers defeat th e system, an d wh y co uldn't we sto p them ?" - and then says:These were imporranr questions. Nearly rwo years after the attac k, the Internet was rife wirh questions and conspiracy theories abour 9/11-in particular, where were the fighters? Could they have physically gotten to any of the hijacked planes? And did rhey shoo r down the final flight , United 93, which ended up in a Pennsylvania field?

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Bronn er 's an swe r to th ese qu estions was "No." The milit ary did not kno w a bout the hijackn gs until a fter the flights had crashed," so fighters could not have interc ep ted the m an d couId not have sho t down United 93. Acco r ding to Bronner, the NORAD ta pes, by fina lly revea ling th e rea l truth about what happened , shot down th e consp iracy th eorists. A secon d August pu blication was Without Precedent: T he Inside Story of the 9111 Com m ission, by th e men wh o had serv ed as th e cornmission's chai r an d vice ch air, Thomas Kean and Lee H arnilton . Whereas Th e 911 1 Com mission Report never mention ed th e exis tence of th eories th at challenged th e officia l account, th is new bo ok ex plicitly tak es on these "co rispiracy theories. " Even a dm itting th at th e 9/11 Co mmission as suc h had been inte rested in " debu nking conspiracy theories," they claim th at it succee ded so well that conspiracy th eor ies have now been "disproved by facts ." 16 Their book, by co nfir m ing Bro n ner's sensatio na l cla im th at memb ers of th e Commission suspected tha t th e military 's pr eviou s story had been a lie, help ed instill the new story in th e pu blic's mind by evo king cons idera ble pr ess coverage. Wh ereas Bronner, Kean , an d H amilton sough t to deb unk a lternative theories a bout th e planes, th e task of debunking alternative th eor ies a bout the World Trade Center co llapses was taken up by the Nationa l Institute of Sta ndards and Techn ology (NIST). Suc h theories had not been exp licitly discussed in its Final Report on the Collapse o] the Wo rld Trade Cente r Towers, pub lished in Septem ber 2005 . But in Aug ust 2006, NIST put out a docu m ent entitled "Answe rs ro Frequ entl y Aske d Quest ion s, " w hich sought t o rebut "alter native hyp othes es suggesting that th e WTC to wers were br ought down by co ntrolled dernolition usin g explosives." ' ? According to a New York Times story by Jim D wyer, "federal officials sa y th ey m oved to affir m the conventio nal histo ry of the day because of th e persistence of wh at they call 'a lternative theori es."?" Whereas th e intent to debunk th ese a lte rnative th eories was ma de explicit only in the bod y of eac h of th ese first three pu blicat ions, it was anno unce d in th e title of a fo ur th: Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Th eories Can't Up to the Facts. Th is book , whi ch is an expa nsio n o f a Popular M echanics ar ticle published in is not only more exp licit but also more ambitious than th e other publicat ion s. Besides dealing with alter native th eori es about bo th th e World Trad e Center an d the failure ro int ercept th e hijack ed airli ners, its editors , David Dunb ar an d Brad Reagan , devote chap ters ro th e Pent agon strike and United Flight 93 . Of the four August publicati ons, this is th e one that is mo st often cited as pr oof th at the "9/11 conspi racy th eor ists " are wr on g. Pop ular Mechanics was used , for example, as th e pr imary authority on 9/11 by a recent BBC documentar y, Th e Consp iracy Files: 9/11, dire cted an d pro duce d by Gu y Smith." (Altho ugh th e BBC has lon g had a reputation

I4 _lmrod uction: Co nspiracy T heories and Evi dcnce 5

for qualiry, this show was almost unbelievably bad. 1 will point out a few of its faults as the occasion arises.) AH four of these publications can be considered official, or at least semi-official, defenses of the governmeut's account of 9/11. Without Precedent is written by me chair and vice chair of the 9/11 Comrnission, which endorsed and even partly created the government's account, NIST is an agency of the US Commerce Department. Bronner's essay was made possible by the privileged access to sorne NRAD tapes he was afforded by the US rnilitary, The Popular Mechanics book could arguably be considered a serni-official publication by virtue of the fact that Benjamin Chertoff, a cousin of Homeland Securiry chief Michael Chertoff, was one of the primary authors of the article from which it is derived (as discussed in Chapter 4). But there are two other, less debatable, bases: Its foreword is written by Republican Senator John McCain and it is eudorsed by Condoleezza Rice's State Department as providing " excellent . .. material debunking 9/11 eonspiracy theories.":"

attempt to dismiss the alternative hypothesis about the Twin Towers that they were brought down by explosives-reveals its approach ro be thoroughly unscientifie. Chapter 4 examines the Popular Mechanics book, Debunking 9111 Myths. It shows that although this book claims to ha ve debunked all the major claims of the 9/11 truth movement, it fails to refute a single one of thern. Readers will see that a more accurate title for the book would have been Perpetuating 9111 Myths. Although readers previously un familiar with the debates about 9/11 rnay find the first chapter somewhat rough going, they should find the second chapter considerably easier. By reading the book as a whole, moreover, readers will be exposed ro most of the overall case for the contention that 9/11 was an inside jobo In spite of the sornewhat difficult nature of the first ehapter, therefore, this book ean serve as an introduetion ro the rnajor issues.

Debunking Stories in the Press The Present BookEaeh chapter of the present book is a respouse to one of these publications. 1 show that, although they may seern irnpressive to people who have only a superficial awareness of the facts about 9/11, their attempts at debunking alternative theories can, through the use of publicly available inforrnation, themselves be thoroughly debunked. NIST spokesman Miehael Newman has, in fact, admitted that NIST's new document "won't convinee those who hold ro the alternative theories .... Ir is for the masses. v-' This book can aIso be read as an explanation, "for the masses, " as to why neither NIST's new doeument nor any of the other three publications is impressive ro those of us who, on the basis of farniliariry with the relevant facts, hoId these alternative theories. Chapter 1 examines Bronner's Vanity Fair article based on the NRAD tapes. This chapter shows that the rnilitary's new explanations for its failure to intercept the first three Ilights, and for why it eould not have shot down the fourth flight, are contradicted by too many faets to be accepted as true. This chapter al so points out the most significant Iact about the change of stories: whether one aecepts the oId or the new story, US rnilitary leaders have lied about 9/11. Chapter 2 exarniues Kean and Hamilton's Without Precedent. The lnside Story of the 9/11 Commission. This chapter shows that, although Kean and Harnilton eorrectly describe the characteristics of irrational conspiracy theories, it is the 9/11 Cornrnission's conspiracy theory, nor the aIternative theory, that embodies these characteristics. Chapter 3 examines NIST's "Answers ro Frequently Asked Questions." Ir shows that in spite of NIST's reputation as a scientific organizaron, its The set of official and serni-official writings that carne out in August 2006 was not the only flurry of publications that, in response ro the growing popularity of the alrernative account of 9/11, attempted ro debunk that account. Probably because of the eoalescence of the shock created by the 9/11 polls and the fact that September 2006 would bring the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, that sumrnet saw an unprecedented number of debunking stories in the press. These stories appeared not only in the mainstream but also in the left leaning press. Indeed, those in the latter were generally more ferocious, apparently because the authors fear that alternative theories about 9/11 discredit the left and distract people from truly important rnatters. There is value, in any case, in these debunking stories. They dernon strate that although the four pubIications of August are considered cornpletely unimpressive within the 9/11 truth eommunity, they have been found quite impressive within the journalistic cornmunity, They thereby show the irnportance of exposing the falsehoods and fallacies in these publications. These press stories also illustrate three means through which people cornmonly avoid serious encounter with the evidence provided by the 9/11 movement: a one-sided use of the term "conspiracy theory"; the employment of paradigmatic and wishfuI thinking; and the acceptance of the assumption that if a document is written by scientists, it must be a scientific documento The remainder of this introduction illustrates how these three methods are used by journalists to avoid serious consideration of facts pointing to the falsity of the official account of 9/11.

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-Besides failing to have this ryp e of balanced approach, Rothsch ild described my books as ones in which "Griffin has peddl ed his conspiracy rheor y." H e gave no par allel description of, say, The 9/1 1 Commission Report as a book in wh ich the government peddled its conspiracy theory. Rothschild wr ote, "T he guru of th e 9/11 conspiracy movernent is David Ray Griffin." H e did nor add, " T he guru of the government's 9/11 conspiracy theory is Philip Zelikow" (the person pr imarily responsible for Th e 9/11 Commission Report; see Cha pter 2). In respon se to rhe poll indicat ing th at 42 percenr of the Ame rican people believ e rhat rhe government and the 9/11 Co rnmi ssio n have cover ed up th e truth a bo ut 9/11, Terry Allen, in an essay for In Th ese Tim es magazin e, exp laine d: "Americans love a con spitacy, , .. T here is sornerhing co mfo rting a bout a w orld wh ere so meo ne is in char ge." She did not o ffer rhis Ame rica ns-Iove-a-conspi racy expl anation to account for th e fact that 48 percent of our people still believe the official conspiracy theoty-according ro whi ch evil outsiders secretly plotted the 9/11 attacks, She also ignored the fact that if people's beliefs are ro be expl ained in terms of a psychological need for corn fort, surely th e most comforting belief abo ur 9/11 w ould be th at our government did not deliberatel y m urde r its own citi zens. P (1, fo r one, w ish th at 1 could believe th is. ) Thi s psychological a ppro ach w as tak en even more fully in th e aforement ion ed essay in Tim e ma gazine. Althou gh it w as entitled, "Why the 1 Consp iracies Won't Go Away, "29th e author, Lev Gro ssman , w as not seekin g to exp lain why rhe govenunent's conspiracy th eory won 't go away. He did qu ore Ko rey Rowe, one of the crea to rs of the popul ar document ary film Loose Change, as saying:Tha t 19 hijackers are going to completely bypass security and crash four cornmercia l airliners in a span of two hour s, with no interruption from the military forces, in the rnost guarded airspa ce in the United States and the wo rld? That to me is a consp iracy theory. Grossman's psychological explana tion fails on its own terms. Which is the gran dest co nspiracy theo ry? The inte rp retatio n of 9/11 as an orchestra ted casus belli to justify US invasions of Afgha nistan and Iraq , or the interpr etation that a han dful of M uslims defeated US secur iry multiple times in one short morn ing and successfully pulled off the most fan tastic terro rist attac k in history simp ly becans e they " hate our freedom an d demo cracy" ? Orc hestrating events to justify wars is a stra tagem so well worn as to be boring.P

Rob ert s also pointed -out th at th e at tem pt to explain away th e 9/ 11 truth movement in thi s wa y w ould not even begin t explai n its lead ers:The scienrists, engineers, and professors who pose th e to ngh questions a bout 9/1 1 are not people who spend their lives mak ing sense of their experience by co nstr ucting conspiracy theor ies. Scientists an d scho lars look ro facts and evidence. They are concerne d with the pa ucity of evidence in behalf of the official exp lanatio n. They str ess that the official exp lana tion is inconsistent with known laws of physics, and thar the numerou s security failures, when combined toge ther, ar e a statistical improbability.

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But this did not faze Gro ssman . He continued to use the terrn "conspiracy the ory " exclu sively for the alternative rheory, Then, t explain why this conspiracy theor y has gained increasi ng acceprance, rather th an go ing awa y, he ignor ed th e possibility th at its evidence is so sttong rhat , as mor e and mo re people become aware of ir, the y rightly fin d it co nvincing. H e instead said, "a grand disasrer like Sept. 11 need s a gra nd conspiracy behind it." The question of th e qu alit y of th e evidence w as thereby ignored. Another problem wirh Grossman's explanatio n is that he, like Allen, got it backward s. As Paul Cra ig Rob erts, wh o had been a leading memb er of the Reagan administra rion, has pointed out:,

Th ese are rather obvious facts, ro wh ich the "conspiracy theory" lab el for the movement has apparently blinded Grossma n and man y other mem bers of th e press. T he psychologizing approach to "consp iracy theories," und erstood one-sidedly, has been fully exemplified in th e aforernentione d BBC docurnenrar y, Tb e Ccnspiracy Files: 9/11. G uy Smith, the director pr oducer, int erviewed only one aca demic memb er of the 9/1 1 truth rnovement, but thi s particular mem ber-Professo r Jam es Fetzer, a well published phil osopher of science who founded Schol ars for 9/ 11 Truth - was particularly well-suited to discuss the nori on of "c onspiracy the ori es," having written an essay on th e subject , Fetzer w as a ble to explain to Smith, therefore, th e points 1 have made here-that everyone accept s conspiracy theories in th e generic sense, th at th e official th eor y about 9/1 1 is itself a conspirac y theor y, and so on. But non e of Fetzer's discussion of this issue mad e it inro Smith's documentary. The film instead , using the lab e! "conspiracy th eor ists" only for people who believe th at 9/11 was an inside job, gave tim e to supporters of the official theory wh o, dernonstrat ing their skills as amateur psychologists, explained that sorne people need conspiracy th eories as security blankets. Left un mentioned, again, was the fact th at if sorne Americans think what they do a bout 9/1 1 becau se of a need for security, then those people would be mor e likely to believe that the US government had not attac ked its own cirizens." T his one-sided use of the term "conspiracy th eor y," com bined with the assurnpt ion th at an y th eory so lab eled is inherently irr at ional, h as creat ed a puzzle for sorne people, n amely: How could otherwise sensible

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Conspiracy Theories: Generic, Rational, and IrrationalIn criticisms of th e 911 1 truth m ovem ent's a lterna tive theo ry, nothing is mo re com mo n th an th e des ignation of it as a co nspiracy th eory, T his desig naticn takes ad vantage of th e fac t that "co nspiracy th eor y" has becorn e suc h a der oga to ry terrn that the claim, " 1 do not believe in con spir acy th eories, " is now almost a reflex acti on. Lyin g behi nd th e term's dero gatory co nuotation is th e ass um ption that conspira cy theori es are in here ntly irration al. The use of the term in thi s way, h ow ever, involves a confusion. A co nspir acy, according tO my dictionary.P is "an agreem ent to perform togeth er an illegal, tre acherous, or evil act. " To hold a conspirac y th eory ab out sorne even t is, th erefore, simply to believe th at this even t resulted fro rn, or iuvolved, such an agreernent. T his, we can say, is th e generic mea ning of the termo We are conspiracy the or ists in thi s generic seuse if we believe that outlaw s have con sp ired to r ob banks, th ar co rpora te exec utives have con spired to defr aud th eir custome rs, th at t ob acco comp an ies have co nspired w ith scientists -fo r-hire to co nceal the health risks of smo king, that oil compa nies have conspired with scientists-for-hire to coucea l th e reality of human-caused glo bal w arming, or th at US pr esid ents have conspired with members of th eir administrations to present false pr et exts for going to war, We are all, in othe r words, co nspiracy theorists in th e gene nc sense. We clearl y do not believe, th erefor e, th ar all co nspira cy theor ies are irr ati onal. Sorne of th ern, of course, are irr ati onal, becau se they begin with th eir co nclus ion rather than with relevant evide nce, th ey igno re all evide nce that co ntradicts th eir pr ed etermined co nclusio n, th ey vio la re scientific principles, and so on. We need , in othe r wo rds, to d istinguish between ra tio na l and irrational conspiracy th eori es. Micha el Moore reflect ed thi s di stincti on in his w ell-known quip , "Now, I'm not into co nspiracy th eories, exce pt the ones th at are tru e. "24 To ap ply th is distin ctio n t o 911 1, we need to rec ognize that everyone holds a co nspiracy theor y in the gen eri c sense a bo ut 9111, beca use everyone believes that the 911 1 atracks result ed from a secret agr eernent to perf orm illega l, treacher ou s, and evil acts. People differ only abo ut th e identity of the co nspirato rs. The official conspiracy th eor y holds that th e conspirators were Os ama bin Lad en and other members of al-Qaeda . The alter nati ve th eory hold s th at th e cons pirato rs were , or a t least included, peopl e within our ow n institution s, In light of these dist inctions, we ca n see that m ost criticisms of th e alternative theory abo ut 9111 are doubly fallacious. They first igno re the fact that th e official acco unt of 911 1 is a cons piracy theory in the generic sense. They then imply that co nsp iracy rheories as such are irrationa l. On

thi s fall acious basis, th ey conclud e, without any serio us exa mina tio n of the empirica l facts, th at the alternative th eor y abo ut 911 1 is irratio na l. However, once the necessary d istinction s are recognized , we can see th at the qu estion to be asked is: Assuming th at one of th e two conspiracy theori es abo ut 9/1 1 is irr ati on al, because it s co ntra d icted by the faet s, is it the official th eor y or th e altemat ive th eor y? O nce thi s is ackno w ledge d, the alterna tive theory abo ut 911 1 canno t be denounced as irr ation al simply by virtu e of being a co ns piracy rheory, It co uld va lidly be called less r ational th an th e officia l co nspiracy theory only by com paring th e two theories with the evidence. But journalists typically excuse th emselves from this cr itical rask by persisting in rhe one-sided use of " conspiracy theory," 25 lon g after thi s one-side dness has been pointed out . For exa m ple, Jim Dwy er wrot e a N ew York Times story entitle d " 2 US Rep orts Seek to Counter Co ns pir acy Theori es Ab out 9/11 " 26 - not, for exam ple, "2 US Rep orts Say Go vernment's Co ns piracy Theory Is Bett er than Altern at ive Consp iracy Theory." One of th ose tw o reports, he pointed out, is a Sta te De partmem document entitled "T he Top September 11 Co nspirac y Theories," but he failed ro m ent ion th at th e truly top 9/1 1 conspiracy the or y is th e gover nme m 's ow n . Then Dwy er, on th e bas is of thi s one-s ide d usage, tri ed ro pok e sorne holes in th e alterna tive theory without feeling a need, for th e sake of jou rn alistic balan ce, to poke holes in th e gove rn ment's the ory- becau se it, of co urse, is not a conspir acy theory. M atthew R othschild , th e editor of th e Progressive, published an essay in his ow n journal entitled, "Eno ugh of the 9/11 Co nspiracy Theo ries, Already, "27 H e was not , of course, callin g on th e govern ment to quit relling its story. He began his essay by saying:Here's wh at the conspiracists believe: 911 1 was an inside job oMembers of th e Bush Administr aron or dered ir, not Osama bin Lade n. Ara b hijackers may not have done tbe deed. . . . [T]he Twin Towers feH not because of the impa ct of the airplanes and the ensuing fires but because [of] explosives... . I'm amaze d at bow many people give credence ro these theories.

H e did not have a paragraph saving:H ere's what the govern ment's conspiracists believe: 19 hijackers with box-cutt ers defeated the most sophisticated defense system in history, H ani H anjonr, who could barely fly a Piper Cub, flew an astounding trajectory ro crash Flight 77 into the Penragon , the most well-pr otected building on eart h. Other hijacker pilot s, by flying planes into rwo buildings of th e World Trade Center, caused thr ee of thern to col1apse straig ht down , totally, and at virtually free-faUspeed.... I'm amazed at how many people give credence to th ese theories.

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thinkers become conspitacy theorists? O ne such person is Salim Muwakkil, a senior editor of In Th ese Times, who wrote an essay asking, "Wha t's the 41 1 on 9/11?" Atter discussing the emergence of the 9/11 truth movemenr, he said:The movernen t caught my atten tion when 1 saw Dr. David Ray Griffin speaking at the University of Wisconsin at Madison on C-5PAN earlier this year... . Griffin [is] emeri tus professor of Philosophy of Religion at the Clarernont 5choo l of Theo logy in California. He has written several weH-regarded books on reJigion and spiritua liry, co-found ed the Center EOI Process Studies and is consi dere d one of th e nati on 's forem ost theologians. I arn familiar with his work and regard him as a wise writ er on the role of spiritualiry in society. 50, it was shocking ro see him pushing a radical conspiracy th eory about 9/1 1 on C-5PAN... . Wha t co uld have tra nsforrned this so ber, reflective scholar into a conspiracy theorist ?

it is, in polite company, never called a conspiracy theory, Baer felt no need ro explain why I, in spite of being thoughtful and well informed, had held that conspiracy theory for a year and a half. M y own explanation is that I was not well informed and hence did not realize that I had passively accepted one of the "wilder conspiracy theories" ever created. Baer's review, incidentally, carne out late in 2004. It would appear that in the intervening period, his suspicions about the official theory have grown. After he, in an interview with Tho m H artrnann in 2006, had made a point about 911 1 profiteering lot of people [in the United States] have profited frorn 9/11. You are seeing great fortun es made- whether they are 0 0 the stock mark et, or selling weapon s, Ot just contrac to rs -grea t fartunes are being mad e" ), H artmann asked:Wh at a bout political profit ? There are th ose wh o suggest th at G. W. Bush, andJor Cheney, Rum sfeld, Feith, Perle, Wolfowit z- som eone in that chain of command-had pretty goo d knowledge th at 9/11 was gunna happen- and really didn 't do rnuch ro sto p it -or even o bstructed efforts to sto p it because they th ought it wo uld lend legitimacy to Bush's . . . failing presidenc y,

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Stating that Terry Allen, whose essay quoted aboye was entitled "The 9/11 Faith M ovement, " had also been puzzled a bout "what happened to Griffin," Muwakkil evideutly accepted her explanation, in which she said: " 1 thiuk part of it is rhat he's a theologian who operates on faith ."32 Appar ently my own answer as to what happened to me-that 1 final1y looked at the evidence aud fou nd it convincing - was ruled out. The question of how 1 lapsed inro conspirato rial thinking was also raised in anoth er left-Ieaning magazine, rhe Nation. The occasion was a review of The New Pearl Harbor written by former CIA case officer Robert Baer-" (on wh om the "Bob Barnes" cha racter in the film Syriana, played by George Clooney, is loosely based l.>' Baer began by sayiug, "C onspiracy theories are hard to kill," Using this term in a one-sided way, like the pr evious authors, Baer ind icat ed right off thar the alterna tive conspiracy theory a bout 911 1 sho uld be killed. He did, however, point out sorne ways in which the Bush administr ation, by resisting an investigation of 9/11 and then falsely claiming that Sadd am Hu ssein had been iuvolved, gave chis theory tr action. Baer a lso pointed Out man y reasons to suspect the official sto ry's clairn thar rhe attacks were a surprise (for oue thin g, "bin Laden al! but took out an ad in the New York Times telling us when and where he was going ro artac k") , Baer criticized me, however, for having so "easily [!eaped] to larger evils, a conspiracy at the top. " He then offered his explanation.Griffin is a thoughtful, well-inforrned thecl ogian who before Sept ernber 11 pro ba bly would nor have gone anywhere near a conspiracy theory. But the catastro phic failures of rhat awfuJ day are so implausible and the lies abo ut Ira q so blat ant , he feeJs he has no choice but to recycle sorne of the wilder co nspiracy theor ies.

1, of course, had goue near and even accepted a conspiracy theory on that awful day icself-the governmenr's conspiracy theory. But evidently because12 D ebunking 9/ 11 Deb unking

Baer replied: "Absolutely." To make sure he was c1ear what Baer was are you person ally of the opinion . . . that saying, Hartrn ann asked: there was an aspect of 'inside job' ro 9/1 1 with in the US governme nr?" Baer replied: "There is th at possibility, th e evidence points at it. " 35 If Baer had theteb y strayed sornewhat from the N ation's sta nce on 9/11, an able, if somewhat less genrlernanly, replacement was at hand. In Septem ber of 200 6, the Nati on published Alexand er Cockbutn's essay, "The 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts," wh ich was an abbreviated version of a essay that had appe ared in Cock burn's own publicatio n, Counterpuncb ." Having no doubt that it is the alternative, not the official, conspiracy theory that is nurty, Cock burn characterizes the members of the 9/11 truth rnovement as kn owing no milita ry history and having no grasp of "the real world ." M oreover, he elsewhere quotes with approval a philosoph er who , speaking of "the 9/1 1 conspira cy cult," says thar its " rnain engine .. . is . .. the death of any conceptio n of evidence," resulting in "the asceudancy of magic over cornmon sense [and] reason .t' F These are strong criticisms, which are easy ro throw at the "movernent" in the abstrac to But do they apply to "the real world," that is, to the inrellectuai Ieaders of the 9/11 truth movement ? Por example, Cockburn refers to me as one of the movement's "high priests." Could anyone - if I rnay be defensive for a moment-e-really read my books in philosoph y, philosoph y of religion, and philosophy of science,38 all of whch involve discussions of epistemology, and conc1ude that I am devod of "a ny conception of evidence" ? Could one, in fact, conclude that after reading my 9/11 books?

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Moreo ver, if rny 9/11 books are nutty, as Cockburn suggests, th en people who have endo rsed th em mu st also be n u ts , The list of nut s would hence inelude economist M ichel Cho ssudovsky, former CIA ana lyst Ray M cGovern, British Minister of Parli arnent M ichael Meacher, former Assistant Treas ury Secretary Paul Craig Rob erts, for rner Assistant Secretary of Housing Ca therine Austin Fitrs, journalists Wayne M adsen and Barrie Zwicker, Institute for Policy Studies co-founder Marcus Raskin, former diplomar Peter Dale Seott, internation allaw pr ofessor s Richard Falk and Burns Weston, social philosopher j ohn McMurtry, th eologi ans J ohn B. Co bb, H arv ey Cox, Carter Heyward, Catherine Keller, and Rosemary Rue th er, ethicists Joseph c. H ough and Dou glas Stur m, writer A.L. Kennedy, m edia critic and pr ofessor of culture Mark Crispin M iller, att orne y Gerry Spence, historians Richard Horsley and Howa rd Zinn, and the late Rev. William Sloan e Coffin, who, after a stint in th e CIA, became on e of the country 's leading preachers and civil right s, anti-wa r, and anti nuclear activists. Furt her mo re, if everyo ne who believes th e alt ernative conspiracy th eory, rather th an th e official conspiracy th eory, is by definition a nut, then Cockburn would have to sling tha t label at Philip J. Berg, for mer deputy attorney general of Penn sylvan iar" Colonel Rob ert Bowrn an, wh o flew over 100 com bat missions in Vietnam and ea rne d a Ph.D . in ae ronautics and nucle ar engineer ing before becoming head of the "Star Wars" pro gram during th e Ford and Ca rter a d rninistra tions r'? Andreas von Blow, formerl y sta te secretary in the Gerrnan Federa l Ministry of Defense, minister of research and technology, and member of pa rlia rnent, where he served on the intelligenc e cornmittee;" Lt. Col. Steve Butl er, formerly vice chan cellor for stude nt affair s at the Defens e La nguage Institute in Monterey, California;" Giulietto Chiesa, an Italian rnembe r of the Europea n parliam ent ;" Bill Christison, formerly a national intelligence officer in the CIA and dir ect or of its O ffice of Region al and Political An alysisr" A. K. Dewdney, eme ritus professor of mathematics and computer science and long-time columnist for Scienti fic A mericani" Gener al Leonid Ivashov, form erly chief of staff of th e Russian armed forces;" Ca pta in Eric H. M ay, formerly an intelligence officer in th e US Arrny;"? Co lonel George N elson, forme rly an airplane ac cide nt inv esti gati on exp ert in th e US Air For ce;" Colonel Ronald D . R a y, a h ighly decorated Vietnam vet eran wh o became deputy ass istant secreta ry of defense during th e Reagan adrninistr ation;" Morgan Reyn old s, former director of the Criminal Justice Center at the N ational Center for Policy Analysis and formet ch ef economist at the Department of Laborr' " Robett Dav id Steele, wh o had a 25-year career in intell igence, setving both as a CIA cIand estine services case officer a nd as a US M arine Corps intelligence officer;51 Ca ptain Russ Wittenberg, a forrn er Air Foree fighter pilot withI

over 100 com bat mission s, after whi ch he was a commercial airlines pilot for 35 yea rs r'? Ca pta in Greg ory M. Zeigler, former intelligence officer in th e US Arm y;5 all th e memb ers of Scho lars for 9111 Truth, Scholars for 3 9/11 Truth and Justice, Veter an s for 911 1 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, and S.P.I.N. E.: th e Scientific Panel Investigating N ine-Eleven ;" and rnost of th e college and university professors listed under "Profess ors Question 9111" on th e Patri ots Question 9/11 web site.f Would Coc kburn really want ro suggest th at th ese pe ople are " nuts" with " no conc eption o f evidence," no aw ar eness of " military history," and no gra sp of "cornrnon sense" and "the real world "? Cockburn's a bsurd charges are va lua ble, however, because th ey illustrate just ho w far the label ing of people as "conspiracy theorists " can lead othe rw ise sensible people aw ay from the real world, in wh ich m an y very intelligent and experienced people, wh o canno t by the wildest stretch be called " nuts," have concluded, on the basis of evidenc e, that 9/11 was, at least in part, an inside jobo

Paradigmatic Thinking, Wishful-and-Fearful Thinking, and the Betrayal of EmpiricismThe widespread pr actice of making jud gments about the alrerna tive 9111 theo ry withc ut serious ly examining the reievant evidence is fostered not only by sloppy thinking abo ut conspir acy the or ies. It is also aided and abetted by two powerful tendencies of th e human mind, which can be called "pa radigma tic thinking" and " wishful-and-fearful thinking."56Both of the se tendencies subvert empiricism, understood here to mean th e practic e of for ming our conclusions on the basis of the relevant empirical evidence. A paradigm, in the m ost gen eral sense of th e terrn (which beca me popular throu gh th e influ ence of Thom as Kuhrr' "], is a worldview. Although the terrn, when used this way, has generally referred to a scientific philo sophical worldview, it can a lso ind icate a poltical worldview. Our par adigm ot worldview informs our judgments ab out what is possible and irupossible, probable and imp roba ble. Insofar as we are paradigmatic think ers, our interpretation of new empirical data will be lar gely determined by our prior judgments about possibility and pr ob ability. "Altho ugh we may be genuinely rnorivated by the desire fot truth," as 1 put it elsewh ere, "we may become so convinced th at o ur present fra mewo rk is th e one and only route to truth th at open-rninded consideratio n of the evidence becomes virtually impossible.t'" Although we may believe ourselves to be ernpiricists, judging rnatters on the basis of the facts, our empiricist intentions are subverted by our p aradigmatic th inking. With regard to 9/1 1, man y peopl e believe rhat the idea that th e Bush adm inistration would have delberately killed thousands of its own citizens

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is beyond the realm of possibility, Ian Markharn, a fellow theologian, wrote in criticism of my first book about 9/11: "When a book argues that the American President deliberately and knowingly was ' invo lved' in the slaughter of 3000 US citizens, then this is irresponsible. "59 When 1 suggested to Markham that our differences seemed to depend on "a priori assumptions as to what the US government, and the Bush administration and its Pentagon in particular, would and would not do," Markham replied by saying, "yes, 1 am operating with an a priori assumption that Bush would not kili 3000 citizens [to promote a political agenda]. "60 On that basis, as I showed in my written response to Markharn's critique, he could ignore rhe ernpirical evidence suggesting the Bush adrninistration had done just that." Markham's a priori assumption reflects, incidentally, what is known as "the myth of American exceptionalism," two renets of which are, in the words of Bryan Sacks, that America is uniquely benevolent power that only ever acrs defensively in its projection of military power" and that "would not conduct covert action against its own citizens." The 9/11 Commission Repon, Sacks points out, is structured along the lines of this myth.f? Given the Iact that this myth is deeply inculcated inro the American psyche, the majority of Americans, including people in the press, were predisposed to accept the Commission's repon without careful scrutiny of its details. A priori assumptions are, ro be sure, necessary. We cannot affotd to waste our time examining evidence for alleged occurrences that are logically or physically impossible. We are also generally justified in ignoring claims about occurrences that, while not strictly impossible, would be highly improbable. However, we should also remain aware that our assumptions about probability are fallible, so we should, at least when the issue is momentous, be open to having our assumptions corrected by new evidence. In the case of the widespread assumption, articulated by Markham, that the Bush-Cheney administration would not have knowingly caused the deaths of thousands of American citizens to further its political agenda, we now know of at least two decisions by this administration that disprove this assumption. We know, for one thing, rhat this administration lied to get us into the war in Iraq. The Downing Street memos show rhat "the intelligence and facts [about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq] were being fixed around the policy [of going to war]. "63 Also, the administration's c!aim thar Saddam was seeking uranium from Africa was shown to be a lie .64 The Americans who have died in Iraq because of these lies now outnumber those who died on 9/11 itself, and they were sent to their deaths not to defend our country but to further the polirical agenda of the Bush administration.

The second example: A week after 9/11, the Bush administration's EPA issued a statement assuring the people of New York City that the "air is safe to breathe." It specifically said that the air did not contain "excessive levels of asbestos"65- even though a Boston Globe story a few days earliet had reported "levels of asbestos up to four times the safe level, placing unprotected emergency workers at risk of disease.r' '" Later, a volunteer's shirt that had been stored in a plastic bag since 9/11 revealed levels "93,000 times higher than the average typically found in the environment in US cities."67 By 2006, 70 percent of the 40,000 Ground Zero workers, according ro a study of 10,000 of thern (most ofwhom were young people), had suffered respiratory problems, with a third having reduced lung capacity.s" Dr. Robert Herbert of Mount Sinai Medical Center, which conducted the study, said that "as a result of their horrific exposures, thousands of World Trade Center responders have developed chronic and disabling illnesses that will likely be perrnanent, "69 Other studies showed, moreover, thar at least 400 cases of cancer had already appeared.?" Attorney David Worby, who is leading a class-action lawsuit, says that 80 of his clients have already died." That so many cases developed so quickly is alarrning, because many types of cancer, such as asbestosis, can rake 15 or 20 years to develop. Experts expect the eventual death toll to be in the thousands. According to Worby, "More people will die post 9/11 from these iIlnesses, than died on 9/11." 72 One EPA scientist, DI. Cate Jenkins, later testified that the EPA's statement about the air was not a mistake but a Why did the EPA lie? According to EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley, pressure came from the White House, which "convinced EPA to add reassuring starements and delete cautionary ones,"74 a consequence of which was that workers not wear protective gear. We have no a priori basis, accordingly, for assuming that the Bush administration would not have intentionally killed thousands on 9/11. This position has been endorsed by Daniel Ellsberg, who knows something abour what U.S. administrations would do. Asked whether an adrnini stration would be "capable, humanly . . . of engineering such a provocation," Ellsberg, who served in the administration of Lyndon Johnson, replied: "Yes, ... I worked for such an administration myself," referring to the fact that Johnson "put destroyers in harm's way in the Tonkin Gulf . . . several times, . . . hoping that it would lead to a confrontation." With regard to the evidence thar 9/11 was engineered by the Bush administration, Ellsberg said: "1 find ... parts of it quite solid, and there's no question in my mind that there's enough evidence there to justify a very comprehensive and hard hirting investigation of a kind that we've nor seen, with subpoenas, general questioning of people, and raising the release of a lot of documents, " 75

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lf careful attention to the empirical data can be discouraged by false paradigrnatic beliefs, it can equal1y be forestalled by the tendency generally ca11ed "wishful thinking." Wishful thinkers, we say, tend to believe what they wish to be true. But equa11y powerful is the orher side of this tendency, which has been cal1ed "fearful thinking.?" lnsofar as we are subject to this tendency, "We tend to reject a priori all those th ngs that we do not want to be true, or at least do not want to be genera11y believed."?? The tendency is hence best called wishful-and-fearful thinking. In re1ation to 9/11, sorne people have said to me: "1 sirnply refuse to believe your account, beca use 1 don't want to live in a country whose political and rnilitary leaders would do such a thing." Although we like to think of -ourselves as empiricists, who make our judgrnents on the facts, we tend uncritically to accept explanations that prevent us from having to accept conclusions that would cause great discomfort. 1 will give several examples. Incompetence 15 a Better Explanation: Many critics assure their readers that there is no need to examine the evidence for complicity beca use the entire fiasco was sirnply another example of the American government's incompetence. Rothschild asks, rhetorically, if "we're supposed to believe that this incompetent Administration, which brought you Katrina, was somehow able to execute this grand conspiracy?" -as if the competence of the US military could be measured by that of FEMA and the Department ofHomeland Security. Cockburn says that one reason that members of the 9/11 truth movement are "nuts" is that we have a "preposterous belief in American efficiency," not realizing that "minutely planned operations-let alone responses to an unprecedented emergency-screw up with monotonous regularity" and that the Bush Cheney adminisrration is one of "more than usual stupidity and incornpetence."?" JoAnn Wypijewski, writing in Cockburn's Counterpunch, complains that members of the 9/11 movernent "have absolute faith in the military capability of the United States, despite the evidence of Iraq'"? -evidently forgetting that the strictly military part of the operation was hailed as a brilIiant success. Baer told readers that there was no need for my "wacky theories" beca use everything could be explained by "a confluence of incompetence, spurious assurnptions and self-delusion on a grand scale." One problem wth this argument-which Baer, at least, seems to have reconsidered -is that although all of these critics appear to have read The New Pearl Harbor, they fail to mention that 1 devoted an entire chapter to this issue, showing that an incompetence theory becomes a huge coincidence theory, which entails "that FAA agents, NMCC and NORAD officials, pilots, irnmigration agents, US military leaders in Afghanistan, and numerous US inte11igence agencies all coincidenrally acred with

extreme and unusual incornpetence when dealing with matters re1ated to 9/11. "80 ls such a theory really more plausible than the theory that al! these failures happened because of coordination? With regard to Cockburn's suggestion rhat "F-15s didn't intercept and shoot down the hijacked planes" because of "the usual screw-ups," Robin Hordon, a former FAA air traffic control!er, wrote, expliciry in response to Cockburn's staternent:One of the most important elements of OUI nation's National Air DefenseSysrern is the speed, efficiency and timeliness of both launching

interceptor fighters and then the steps taken to acrually intercept "rarget" aitcraft ouce airborne, Without such tirnelines s, there would be no purpose in having such a defense system at all. . . . So, at every problema tic point of readiness, over the years, the military and FAA have worked diligent1y, through practice and experience, to get interceptors airborne and headed for intercept operations as quickly as possible. This has resulted in an amazingly responsve system in which, pilots, f1ight mechanics, aircraft, airport configurations and NORAD/FAA radar procedures have been honed and developed to save time as rneasured in seconds, This operation is precise-so Cockburn simply does not know what he's ralking about."

The more general point here concerns the nonsensical nature of sweeping generalizations about the efficiency of "the present adrninistration." Besides needing to distinguish berween, say, FEMA and the US military, we need, with regard to our armed forces, to distinguish between tasks for which they are highly trained, such as invading othet countries, and tasks for which they are poorly prepared, such as occupying other countries, This point is germane not only to the issue of intercepting airplanes but also to the claim that the Bush adrninistration and its military were too incompetent to have organized the 9/11 attacks. The Pentagon regularly organizes military exercises, sometirnes called "war garues," to practice various possible scenarios. Included in these exercises, as will be discussed later, have been sorne that were quite similar to those that occurred on 9/11. The failures of FEMA in New Orleans and the failure of US ground troops to quell violence in Iraq have no re1evance to the question of whether the Pentagon could have staged the attacks of 9/11. Stil1 another problem with the claim that the Bush administration and its rnilitary were too incompetent to have orchestrated the attacks is that this a priori argument could equal1y wel1 be used to prove that they could not have organized rhe military assaults on Afghanistan and Iraq. Also, if the US government, with its Pentagon, was too incompetent to ha ve orchestrated the attacks, would this not have been a11 the more true of al-Qaeda? Cockburn seeks to silence rhis question by ca11ing it "racist,"

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but the issue behind that question involves mean s and opportuniry, not race (see the statement by Ge nera l Leonid Ivashov, 327n46). Still an other problem with the incornpetence theory is th at it leaves out a hu ge arno unt of th e dat a th at needs exp laining, s uch as th e verti cal collapse of th ree skysc rapers at virtua lly free-fall speed. Baer, having m entioned such pro blems, seemed co nten t to leave th em as ano ma lies, saying, with more th an a h int of wishful thinking, " [a]s m ore fact s eme rge about Sept em ber 11, man y of Gr iffin's question s should be an swered. " Cock bur n, using me ro illustr at e th e " idiocy" of the "9/11 conspiracy nut s," explains that we overestimate the Ame rican milit ary's competence because we "appea r to have read no milit ary history," Actually, I have read sorne, and o ne thing I learned was how common it has been for imperial pow ers, including th e United Sta tes, to stage false-flag attacks ro provide pretexts for going to war.82 I have also read Mic hael Par enti 's observa tion that "polic yrnakers [sometimes) seize up on incompetence as a cover" -a cover th at is then "eagerly emb race d by various co mrnentators," becau se they prefer to see inc ompetence in thei r lead ers " r ather th an ro see deliberare decepti on. " 83 Altho ugh this form of wishful-thinking surely does not characterize Cockb um himself, it has prob ably influenced th e acceptance of the incompetence explana tion of 9/11 by many other journalists. Someone Have Talk ed: Ano the r popular argume nt is that, in Rothsch ild's words, in any "vast co nspiracy ... [tjh ere's th e likelihood that someone along th e cha in would squea 1." Even thi s adm inistra tion Baer said his experie nce had tau ght him - "co uld never have acquiesced in so mu ch human slaughte r and kept it a secreto Especially wh en so m an y people would have to have been in volved." Although this argument m ay seem stro ng at firs t gla nce, it becomes less impressi ve und er exa rnina tio n. This argument is, for o ne thin g, based pa rtly on the belief th at it is impossible for big governme nt opera tio ns to be kept secret very lon g. H owev er, the M anhattan Pr oject ro crea te an ato mic bomb, which involved so rne 100,000 peo p le, was kep t secret for several years . Also, the United States pr ovoked and participated in a civil war in Ind one sia in 1957 th at resulted in sorne 40,000 deaths, but thi s illegal wa r was keep secre t frorn th e Am erican peo ple un til a book abo ut it appeared in 1995. 84 It also mu st be reme mbered tha r if the gove rn me nt ha s kept severa! other big op eration s hidden , we by definitio n do n ot kn ow ab out the m. We cannot claim ro know, in any case, th at the government could not keep a big and ugly op erarion secre t for a lon g tim e. A sec ond reason to question th is a pri ori objeetion is th at th e det ails of th e 9/1 1 ope ra tion wo uld have been known by only a few individ uals in ke y planning posi tions. Also, they wo uld hav e been peopl e with a proven abiliry ro keep their mo uths sh ut. Everyo ne directly complicit in th e oper atio n, rnoreover, wo uld be highl y rnotivared to avo id public disgrac e

an d th e death penalty. The c1aim tha t one of these people wo uld have come forwa rd by now is irr ational. Wh en peo ple suggest that w histle blowers wo uld have come forward, of course, th ey usually ha ve in mind people who, wi tho ut being com plicit in th e operation, carne ro kn ow a bo ut it afterwar d, perhaps realizing th at sorne order they had carried out played a part in th e overa ll ope ra tion. M an y such peopl e could be kept silent m erely by the or der to do so, alo ng with the kn owl edge that if th ey disob eyed th e order, they wo uld be sent to prison or at least los e th eir jobs. For peopl e for w horn tha t would be ins ufficient intimid ation , th er e ca n be threats ro th eir Ia rnilies." How man y peo ple who ha ve expresse d certainty a bout w his tleblowe rs wo uld, if th ey or their farnili es or th eir job s wo uld be endangered by coming forwa rd with inside inform ation, do so? In any case, th e assumption that " sorneon e woul d have talk ed ," being simply an assurnptio n, cannot pr ovide a ration al basis for refusing to look directl y at th e evidence. Overwhelm ing Ev idence [or al-Qa eda's Responsiblity: Another reaso n for c1aiming that th ere is no nee d ro examine th e evidence for rhe a lterna tive th eor y is that th e evidence for al-Q aeda's responsibility is overwhelming . Altho ugh this ma y sound like an em pirical argume nt, it is only qu asi-ernp irical, becau se it tak es a claim of one of the suspec ts -e- the Bush admini stra to n - as eviden ce, th en uses it as a basis for igno ring th e evidence th at, acco rding ro th e 9/11 rruth m ovement , disproves that c1aim. This approach ha s been exempli fied by Roth sch ild, who sai d th at the alterna tive th eory is " outlandish .. . on its face " becau se "Osarna bin Lad en has alrea dy c1aimed responsibility for the attack.... Why no t tak e him at his word? " Rothschild th ereby revealed his ign oran ce of th e fact that th ere are goo d rea sons to co nsider all of these " confessions" fabricated. As I point out in Chapter 2, th e mor e famo us o f th e bin Laden confession videos is widely considered a fake. 86 Rothsch ild was also evidently unaware of th e fac t th at th e FBI's page on bin Laden as a " M ost Wanted Terrorist " does not list him as wa nte d for 9/11 and th at , w he n asked why, a FBI spo kesman said, " beca use th e FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden ro 9/ 11 87 -a fact that pu blica tions suc h as Progressive, one would think, sho uld be discoverin g an d report ing. " It would seem that R othsch ild's wish th at the 9/11 truth m ovem ent would go aw ay - reflected in his angry titl e, "Enough of th e 9/1 1 Conspiracy Th eores, Already" - accounts for his failure ro st udy th e movement's evidence sufficiently to learn even such elementary facts. The co mpla in t by Allen and Cock burn that the 9/11 m overnenr is a "d istrac tio n" from truly irnp ortan t issues sugges ts th at th is form of th inking may be a maja r fac tor in ma ny left-lean ing ]Ournalists' disinclinatio n to look ser iously at the evidence .

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Fear of Being Lab eled: An even more obvious example of w ishful and-fearful th inking, w h ich could explain why few journalists hav e examined th e evid enc e in an ope n-rnin ded way, at least in print, has been pointed o ut by M ich ael Keefer: " the fea r of being mocked as a 'consp irac y theorist ' o r ' tinfoil hat we arer,' w ith a con sequent loss of public credibility and professional respecr." Altho ug h Keefer was thinking of writers on th e left," this dynamic surely applies to journalists in general, for whom "credibility is everything" (as one ofte n hear s)." Salim Muwakkil was appa re ntly inf1uenced by this fear. Reporting that hearing my lecru re awakened his " Iatent skepticisrn" about the official story, he explain ed th at th e coll apse of rhe towers in 2001 had reminded him "of how C hicago's publ ic hou sing high -ri ses collapsed vertica lly int o their own Ioundari on s follow ing co ntro lled implosions. " He th en said:Inh erently ske ptical of official dogm a , th e left has an affinity fo r alternative ex pla na tions, w hich some times ma kes progressives pushovers for any sca mmer with a debunking tale ro tell. People like Griffi n and Brigham Young University physics pr ofessor Steven E. jones, who also believes rhe towers were to ppled by . . . co ntro lled demolition, are not the usu al sus pec ts . T heir di ssent from th e officia l line is more credible bec a use th eir credent ials conno te respec ta biliry, Griffin stoked my interest beca use of my resp ect for his scho larsh ip. But his expertise wa s in a realm co rnpletely unrelat ed ro the knowledg e needed to mak e his th eories cre di ble.

foundarions," just as had "Chicago high-rises . . . foll owing controlled impl osions," had evidently been wiped Irorn Muwakkil's rnind.

Scientists and Scientific ExplanationsHaving looked at two ways in which pe ople, as illus tra ted by journalist s, can avo id confronting the evidence that 9/11 was a n inside jo b, I now look at a third: th e assumption that if an explan ati on is given by scie ntists, ir is a scientific explana tion. In our critical moments, we know th at th is is not necessaril y true. We know th at th ere ha ve been scientist s who we re w illing ro prost itute rhemselves-ro fudge the truth for th e sa ke of money, w hich in so rne cases mighr sim ply mean to keep their jobs. We even kn o w th at so rne scienrists have done this with regard ro glo bal w arming, an issue th at threatens the very survival of human civilization. We sho uld be aware, accordi ngly, that if 9/11 was orchestrated by our own go vernme nt , th ere wo uld be scientists on the governme nt's payroll, or on th e pa yroll of co m panies he avily dependent on govern ment contracts,who would provide false acco unt s of the collapses of the World Trade Cenrer buildings or the damage ro th e Penta gon, There is, nevertheless, a w idespread tenden cy ro assume th at if sorne explan ation is provided by scientists, it must be a scientific explan ation. An explanation should be con sidered scient ific, however, o nly if ir exemplifies certain standard criteria . One crite rio n , often expressed by spea ki ng of sc ient ific method as involving " in ference ro the best explan at ion," is th at th e ex p lana tio n ha s been shown to be superior ro th e ot her possibl e hyp otheses. Scientist s cannot say: "We assumed that A was th e ca use of X. We th en found a way th at A might have caused X. We were happy with thi s ex p lana tion. So we didn't consider hypothesis B, which so rne other people had suggested." And yet, as shown in Chapter 3, this is exacd y th e method used by the scientists who wrote the NIST rep orto To be su re, scientists can often in practice get a way w ith using t hat meth od if th eir resulting explanation fulfill s rhe most irnp ortant of all crireria-thar rhe explanation be consist ent with a ll of th e rele vant evidence. If ir is nor, then the ex p la nation is said ro be falsified. Or, ro be mor e precise, the explanation must at leasr be consistent w ith virtually all of the evide nce: Ir is usually considered accep ta ble ro have a few "anomalies" -phenomena rhar, ir is assu med, will eventually be shown to consisrent with rhe theory. Bur an explan ati on cannot be consid ered sClentific if it musr elassify rhe maj arity of rhe evide nce as a nomalous. In making an inference ro rhe besr explanation, in orhe r w o rds, " best" does nor mean best from rhe point of view of o ur pr eviou s beliefs, our hopes and fears, or the polirical survival o f rhe pr esent ad minist ra rio n. Ir means besr in rerms of raking account, in a self-con sisrent a nd otherwise

At that p oint, havin g ign ored rhe fact that Jones' expertise is not unrelated ro th e issue of why th e buildings collapsed , Muwakkil continued : "Progressive jou rnali sts have a n adde d burden not ro be seen as fodder for conspiracists. Sornet imes th ey need a little help." For such help, he reported, he turned ro Chip Berler, whose work is devoted ro making sure that "progr essives a re not duped by conspiracists of any stripe." Muwakkil evide nt ly silence d his latent skepti cism about the official sto ry by accepting Berlet 's ass ur a nce th at " G ri ffin's work lis] 'a lot of .. . a r mcha ir g uesswork by people who haven 't done their homework.l'" ? Although Muwakkil mention ed that Berlet had made su ch charges in a critique of Th e N ew Pearl H arbar, he fa iled ro point out that th e website containing Berlet 's critique also co nta ins my response, " which sh ows th at 1 had done my " ho mework " on 9/11 far more rhoroughly than had Berler. (1 had originally planned ro inelude this essay in rhis book, bur had ro leave ir out ro keep rhe size d own. ) And alrho ug h rhe alrernarive rheory is nor in rhe slighresr debunked by Berl et's attack, Muwakkil ends his essay by indicaring rhar ir has been debunked , so th ar " ong oing skepricism abour rhe official 9/11 srory " is fueled so lely by " lack of fairh in rhe Bush adminisrr arion , as well as irs parh ological aversion ro rransparency." The facr rhar rhe Twin Towers collapsed "vertically into rheir own

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plau sible way, of all of the relevant evidence. Judged in terms of thi s sta nda rd, as we will see, th e officia l 9/1 1 conspiracy theory is a complete failure. Becau se scientists, like everyone else, a re subject to paradi gmatic and wishful-and -fearful thinking, the scientific method involves another feature: peer review. To be accepted as good science, a n explanati on mu st be a ble to pass mu ster with fellow scientists ha vin g no vested interest in the outcorne, Ir is not clear, however, th at a ny of th e officia l reports ab out 9/11 have been su bjected to such review. And, inso far as critiq ues of the se rep orts have been proffered by independent scientists, th ey have been rid iculed as th e ravings of "conspiracy th eorists" or simply igno red. AII offers to debat e ha ve been sp urne d. In th e experimenta l sciences , there is another criterion: repeatabiliry, If th e proffered expl an ation dea ls with so rne result th at could in principi e be reproduced if the explanat ion is correct, th en th e explan at ion-the th eory or the hypo th esis-must be tested. One of th e many pr oblems with the N IST report on the Twin Towers, as I point out in Cha pte r 3, is th at it ignores thi s cond itio n. I distingui shed ea rlier bet ween rat ional and irr ati onal co nsp iracy th eories. I have here distingu ished betw een scientific and unscientific th eo ries. These rwo distinctions ca n, for o ur present purposes, be tre at ed as interchan geable, because th e criteria for rational theories are virtually identical with the cr iter ia for scienti fic th eories. The main point of this di scu ssion , in a ny case, is th at th e o ffic ia l th eo ry about the co llapse of th e World Tra de Ce nte r or th e damage to th e Pentago n ca nnot be co nside red scientific (or rational ) simp ly becau se it has been endo rsed by scient ists. One reason is th at other scientists have given alte rnative explanati ons, so metimes in pap er s th at have passed peer rev iew by ind ependent scie ntists. T he co mpe ting th eori es mu st be jud ged so lely in terms of ho w we ll th ey handle th e relevant facts. If one wants to ma ke a rational judgm ent ab out 9/1 1, according ly, th ere is no escap e from examining the relevant fact s, There can be no sho rt-cut to truth by mean s of appea l ro th e a ut ho rity o f certain scientists -who may be scientists -for-hi re. j ournalists w ho seek to debunk th e a ltern ative the ory a bo ut 9/1 1, however, regularl y appea l to th e o fficial an d semi-official reports as if th ese w ere neutral , scientific documenrs. I will illustrate th is point by usin g th e essay by M atthew Rothschild, which is the lengthi est o f the journalistic debunking atte mpts. Having menti oned the claims th at both the Tw in Towers an d Building 7 of the World Trade Center w ere brought down by explosives, Rothschild says: "Problem is, sorne of th e best engineers in th e co untry have studied the se question s and come up wi t h perfe ctly logical, scient ific ex planations

for what happened ." He then cites the FEMA rep ort, which was based o n work by the Ameri can Sociery of Civil Engineers (ASCE). H e was evidentl y unaware, howe ver, th at the editor of Pire Engineering magazi ne wrote that ihere wa s "go od reason to believe th at th e 'offi cial investigati on ' blessed by FEMA . . . is a half-baked farce that may alread y have been cornmandeer ed by political for ces wh ose primary int erests, to put it mildl y, lie far afield of full disclosure.t"? Rothsch ild wa s also appa rently un awar e that FEMA, according to a book by New York Times rep orters, refu sed ro provide th e ASCE engi neers with " basic data like detailed blueprints o f the buildings" and " refus ed to let th e tearn appea l to the public for photographs and video s o f the tower s th at co uld help with the investigation. " 93 H e was al so perhap s unaware th at th e ASCE team reported th at its best hypo thesis with regard ro w hy WTC 7 co llapsed had " only a low probab iliry of occ urrence .J''" Rothsch ild al so ap pea led to th e rep ort put o ut by NI ST, perhaps unaware th at N IST is an agency o f the Co mmerce Department and hence of the Bush a d m inistra tion. Giv en thi s a dm inis tra tion's re cord o f manipulat ing scie nce (see Ch apter 3), th ere is no reason ro ass ume th at NIST's investigati on was an y less "cornma ndee red by political forces" th an w as FEM A's. In what crimi nal tr ial would a document produced solely by th e defendanr's staff be accepted, without a ny cha nce for rebuttal by the prosecuting attorney, as neutral scientific evide nce o f the defendant's inn ocence? One mu st actua lly examine NIST's report ro see if it is a scienti fic, rather th an a pol itical , documento And , as I show in Cha pter 3, it proves ro be w ors e, at least in so rne re sp ect s, th an t he FEMA rep ort. Rothschild point s out th at I had mentioned the od dity tha t, altho ug h the official sto ry claims that th e fires ca used th e tower s ro coll ap se by weakening their ste el, the South Tow er co llapse d first , eve n th ou gh it was struck seco nd, so th at its fire s had less time ro heat up th e stee l. Rothschild rebuts t his po int by saying: " [N IST's) Fina l Rep ort . .. notes that ten cor e columns were severed in th e So uth Tower, wher eas only six were sever ed in th e No rt h. And 20, 000 mo re sq ua re feet o f insula tio n wa s stripp ed from the trusses in the Sout h Tower th an th e N orth. " The word " no tes," how ever, sugg ests th at NIST based th ese figures o n empirica l evidence . As I sh ow in Cha pte r 3, however, NIST's claims are pure specul ation, w hich, far from bein g sup po rt ed by th e avail able evidence, run counter to it. Rothsch ild ass umes, however, th at since th e NIST te am invo lvcd sci en tists a nd eng inee rs, NI ST's pub lish ed conclusio ns mu st be scientific. With regard to Building 7, Rothschild qu ot ed NIST's initial rep ort, which says: " N IST has seen no evid ence th at the co llapse of WTC 7 was ca used by bombs, m issiles, o r controll ed demol ition. " Did Rothsch ild

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think that a report put out by an agency of Bush's Commerce Departmenr could possibly say anything else? Turning to the Pentagon, Rothschild rebutted alternative theories by quoting the Popular Mechanics book and Mete Sozen, one of the authors of the Pentagon Building Performance Report, upon which that book relies. In Chapter 4, I show why that official report on the Pentagon and the book by Popular Mechanics are unreliable. With regard ro the alternative theory's claim that United Flight 93 "was brought down not by the passengers struggling with the hijackers but by a US missile," Rothschild said: " But we know from cel! phone conversations that passengers on board that plane planned on confronting the hijackers." As I show in Chapters 1 and 4, however, the cel! phone calls that were allegedly made from this flight, which played a big part in the movie United 93, would not have been possible in 2001. As evidence that United 93 could not have been shot down, Rothschild c1aimed that it had already crashed before NORAD knew what was going on. Basing this c1aim on Michael Bronner's Vanity Fair article about the NORAD tapes, Rothschild showed no awareness of the massive evidence against this c1aim, which I had summarized in my critique of the 9/11 Commission's report." On the basis of such appeals to these official and semi-official publications, Rothschild says: "Not every riddle that Griffin and other conspiracists pose has a ready answer. But almost al! of their major assertions are baseless .... At bottorn, the 9/11 conspiracy theories are profoundly irrational and unscientific." I agree, of course, that there is a 9/11 conspiracy theory that is "profoundly irrational and unscientific." In the pages to follow, however, I show, by means of critiques of thes e official and semi-official publications, that it is the official 9/11 conspiracy theory that deserves this description. Postscript: While correcting proofs for this book, I learned that the editor of a left-leaning website had, in explaining wh y it was not necessary to read anything I had written about 9/11, said that "a professor of theology is not qualified to talk about anything but rnyths." He apparently failed to see that I should, therefore, be erninently qualified to discuss the official account of 9/11.

ONE

9/11 Live or Distorted: Do the NORAD Tapes Verify The 9/11 Commission Report?significant stir was created in the first week of August 2006 by the publication in Vanity Fair of an essay by Michael Bronner entitled "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes."! Bronner was the first journalist to be given access to these audiotapes, which NORAD had provided, upon demand, ro rhe 9/11 Commission in 2004, excerpts from which were played during its public hearing in ]une. There was really nothing new in Bronner's article. It simply popularized the position that had been articulated in The 9111 Commission Report, which had appeared in the summer of 2004. But the sensational charge in this report that is highlighted by Bronner's essay had hardly been noticed by the public or the press, due to the size of the Commission's report, the number of issues it covered, and the unsensational way in which this charge was made. This charge was that the story rhe US military had rold frorn 2001 to 2004 about its response to the hijacked airliners on 9/11 wa s falseo It is called false because it conflicts with the tapes received from NORAD. The stir created by Bronner's essay was increased by the publication at the same time of Without Precedent, a book by Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton-the chair and vice chair of the Commission, respeetively-in which this charge is also made. Bronner's essay makes the charge even more sensational by reporting that at least sorne members of 9/11 Commission believe that these military leaders had made these false statements deliberately-that they had lied.' In the present chapter, I will first describe the conflicts between what the military had said and what these NORAD tapes imply, explaining why sorne members of the Commission believe that these conflicts mean that the military had lied. I will then ask whether the confliets, along with other facts, might more reasonably lead to a different conc1usion -that these NORAD tapes present a false story, I will also point out an implication of the 9/11 Commission's report and Bronner's essa y that neither of thern intended, namely, that regardless of what we conclude about these tapes , we now know that the American military has lied about 9/11.

A

Conflicts between the NORAD Tapes and the Military's Previous TestimonyThe charge that the military gave a false account primarily involves its pre

2726 Debunking 9/11 Debunking

2004 c1aims about the responses of NEADS-the Northeast Air Defense Sector of NRAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command) to rwo flights: AA (American Airlines) Flight 77 and DA (United Airlines) Flight 93. There is also, although Bronner does not deal with it, a serious discrepancy with regard to the military's pre-2004 c1aims about DA Flight 175. A11 of these c1aims are contradicted by the tapes, with "tapes" here meaning not only what Bronner ca11s "the NRAD tapes," but also what he ca11s "the para11el recordings from the EA.A.,"3 which he used in conjunction with the NRAD tapes. (Excerpts of these FAA tapes were also played at the Commission's ]une 2004 hearings.) Here are the earlier c1aims made by the military-as represented at a 9/11 Commission hearing on May 23, 2003,4 by Major General Larry Arnold, the commanding general of NRAD's Continental Region, and Colonel Alan Scott, who had worked closely with Arnold-fo11owed by the contradictory information provided by the tapes: (1) The military's earlier claim: When fighter jets at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia were scrambled at 9:24 that morning, they were scrambled in response to word from the FAA that possibly either AA 77 (as implied by Colone! Scott) or DA 93 (as stated by General Arnold) had been hijacked and was headed toward Washington. What the tapes indicate: NEADS did not learn that AA 77 and DA 93 had been hijacked until after they had crashed. The Langley fighters were instead scrambled in response to "phantorn AA 11" -that is, in response to a false report that AA 11 had